(Quite a lengthy preamble even by my standards this week – feel free to scroll past if you’d rather be listening already than reading).
“I don’t know who needs to hear this”, wrote one John Girgus in an open Facebook post in April 2022, “but Sarah Records is over.
"It’s cool to remember and appreciate the music, but to go on like it’s still a relevant, active label and that the artists are still somehow a music scene, we kind of had that chance 20-25 years ago.
"[…] Now I watch the same people try to start the whole thing up again after decades, every few years. Maybe I can offer some helpful advice from my experience: It's not going to happen. Let it go”.
Even without considering that being relevant and being a scene aren’t necessarily one and the same thing, there has never been a point in the 31 years and counting since Sarah closed that a claim of “it’s over” would have withstood maximum scrutiny.
Think Shinkansen Records forming from the ashes of Sarah within a year, taking East River Pipe, Blueboy, Harvey Williams and Bobby Wratten with it.
Think Heavenly releasing another corking album in 1996 before tragic events close to home prompted a hiatus.
Think Secret Shine whacking out three albums in five years at the start of the new century, and recording and touring to this day.
Think The Orchids’ glorious returns, and endless victory lap as indiepop’s favourite cuddly, socially conscious, tipsy uncles.
Think of Orlando’s Dickon Edwards’ bright, engaging and often killingly funny Fosca pop project.
Think the aforementioned Heavenly’s transformations into Marine Research, thence Tender Trap, thence Catenary Wires.
Think the Sarah tour which brought Even As We Speak and Boyracer back to these shores, and Action Painting! out of cold storage.
Think the My Secret World film and exhibition.
Think The Hit Parade’s relative stardom in the Far East.
Even without considering that being relevant and being a scene aren’t necessarily one and the same thing, there has never been a point in the 31 years and counting since Sarah closed that a claim of “it’s over” would have withstood maximum scrutiny.
Think Shinkansen Records forming from the ashes of Sarah within a year, taking East River Pipe, Blueboy, Harvey Williams and Bobby Wratten with it.
Think Heavenly releasing another corking album in 1996 before tragic events close to home prompted a hiatus.
Think Secret Shine whacking out three albums in five years at the start of the new century, and recording and touring to this day.
Think The Orchids’ glorious returns, and endless victory lap as indiepop’s favourite cuddly, socially conscious, tipsy uncles.
Think of Orlando’s Dickon Edwards’ bright, engaging and often killingly funny Fosca pop project.
Think the aforementioned Heavenly’s transformations into Marine Research, thence Tender Trap, thence Catenary Wires.
Think the Sarah tour which brought Even As We Speak and Boyracer back to these shores, and Action Painting! out of cold storage.
Think the My Secret World film and exhibition.
Think The Hit Parade’s relative stardom in the Far East.
Think St Christopher never really stopping.
Think The Sweetest Ache's lowish key return to the live fold.
Think two dedicated books.
Think two dedicated books.
Think Jane Duffus’s glossy fanzines.
Think Nick Godfrey’s tireless efforts to license and sell Sarah (and other) bands' radio sessions as beautiful physical artefacts.
Think of all of the other Sarah or Sarah-adjacent projects my rapid brainstorm will inevitably have missed.
Think, also, of the further decade or so’s post-Sarah existence – replete with appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – of late period act Aberdeen, co-founded and co-fronted by… one John Girgus, whose relationship with former band members, and with the wider indiepop cognoscenti in general, has become that bit more strained the more trenchantly he has espoused his mutually incompatible political views.
Hence the absence of the obvious go-to fuzzed-up indiepop singles such as Loveblind and Popkiss.
Hence, instead, a track – taken from last year’s appropriately varied comeback album A Life In Numbers – which will surely delight anyone who regards 1989-1992 as Lush’s imperial phase (your writer raises his hand); the almost sophisti-pop opener to the Bank of England album from the band’s Cath Close-fronted period (which would also beget the bossa nova stylings of side project Beaumont); and the late Keith Girdler sounding to the manner born as a Neil Tennant-alike electronic pop vocalist on the magical Sarah b-side Hit.
It was interesting to read in a recent online interview with Paul Stewart and Gemma Malley how powerful a live proposition they believed Blueboy had become as the early-mid 1990s progressed, and the Bikini live EP of tracks performed in concert in Toulouse in 1994 - from which I have included Sea Horses - backs up their assertion most compellingly.
Hmmm, that's 1,300 words about a label that's apparently over. I can't be doing this right.
Think Nick Godfrey’s tireless efforts to license and sell Sarah (and other) bands' radio sessions as beautiful physical artefacts.
Think of all of the other Sarah or Sarah-adjacent projects my rapid brainstorm will inevitably have missed.
Think, also, of the further decade or so’s post-Sarah existence – replete with appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer – of late period act Aberdeen, co-founded and co-fronted by… one John Girgus, whose relationship with former band members, and with the wider indiepop cognoscenti in general, has become that bit more strained the more trenchantly he has espoused his mutually incompatible political views.
I’ll leave others to decide whether this is coincidental.
Either way, the point is that there's never yet been too sizeable a gap with no activity at all by somebody Sarah-oriented. There have been quieter periods, sure, as is only to be expected when the vicissitudes of life, growing up, starting families, changing careers and the rest of it necessarily intervene.
Either way, the point is that there's never yet been too sizeable a gap with no activity at all by somebody Sarah-oriented. There have been quieter periods, sure, as is only to be expected when the vicissitudes of life, growing up, starting families, changing careers and the rest of it necessarily intervene.
If the accuracy of a Sarah-is-dead pronouncement was already moot in 2022, however, it's completely at odds with a particularly productive last four years of alumni activity. Lightning in a Twilight Hour, Heavenly and related have already been touched upon since That Music List returned. Today it’s the turn of Blueboy.
Although with the propensity to vary their sound and subject matter as much as stablemates The Field Mice, Blueboy’s eclecticism in three and a half decades’ worth of on-and-off output seems to have been overlooked in comparison.
Perhaps some of the styles attempted just haven’t had the cool of some of Bobby Wratten and co.’s choices (the Loops, the New Orders, and so on), or perhaps the band has wanted for the same compelling background narrative of boiling sexual fury between band members.
Although with the propensity to vary their sound and subject matter as much as stablemates The Field Mice, Blueboy’s eclecticism in three and a half decades’ worth of on-and-off output seems to have been overlooked in comparison.
Perhaps some of the styles attempted just haven’t had the cool of some of Bobby Wratten and co.’s choices (the Loops, the New Orders, and so on), or perhaps the band has wanted for the same compelling background narrative of boiling sexual fury between band members.
In giving Blueboy the Session Of Sorts treatment here, I was very conscious of putting that first detail in particular to right.
Hence the absence of the obvious go-to fuzzed-up indiepop singles such as Loveblind and Popkiss.
Hence, instead, a track – taken from last year’s appropriately varied comeback album A Life In Numbers – which will surely delight anyone who regards 1989-1992 as Lush’s imperial phase (your writer raises his hand); the almost sophisti-pop opener to the Bank of England album from the band’s Cath Close-fronted period (which would also beget the bossa nova stylings of side project Beaumont); and the late Keith Girdler sounding to the manner born as a Neil Tennant-alike electronic pop vocalist on the magical Sarah b-side Hit.
It was interesting to read in a recent online interview with Paul Stewart and Gemma Malley how powerful a live proposition they believed Blueboy had become as the early-mid 1990s progressed, and the Bikini live EP of tracks performed in concert in Toulouse in 1994 - from which I have included Sea Horses - backs up their assertion most compellingly.
It also serves as a welcome reminder of Keith’s often delicious sense of humour – “Steven is writing / Steven is writhing” and “There’s more to me than you think”. It, and him, remain much missed.
The good news for lovers of the Bikini EP is that the Aquavinyle label which released it has resurrected itself after decades of inactivity, and will release the Toulouse concert in its entirety on a white vinyl longplayer entitled Jimmy on the 20th of this month. If the abnormally good sound quality of the EP translates across the entire album, it should be outstanding. No checking online setlist aggregators to see what’s on it, though. That’s cheating.
Mentioned further up the page, Even As We Speak get their first airing since TML came back this week, as a means with which to launch another new semi-regular feature - Goodier Before Wiley and Lamacq, where "before" has a double meaning.
We all have our own favourite presenters of or entry points to particular longstanding programmes, TV or radio; and whether it’s a popular view or not, my favourite era of listening to the Evening Session on Radio 1 was when Mark Goodier was at the helm.
Guileless is not a word often thrown around as a compliment, but I absolutely mean it as one when considering Goodier’s choices for the show between 1990 and 1993. And I do assume they were mainly his, considering he and successors Jo Wiley and Steve Lamacq shared a producer in Jeff Smith (at least initially; Smith would ascend far loftier heights from 1994).
The more cynical cool of the latter duo was simply absent from Goodier’s puppy dog enthusiastic delivery and his record box, and there were things he played that, had Wylie and Lamacq already been installed, I believe would never have got a look in.
Industrial acts such as KMFDM or Skyscraper. The classical music sampling breakbeat dance of Nu-Tek. A genuinely fantastic ragga-tinged skronk from the by then commercially busted flush Adamski. The slow pummelling of Mad Cow Disease. The stop-start hardcore of John & Julie. And, on occasion, acts from a Sarah Records label whose status as pariah among the music inkies and those who wrote for them was virtually irreversible by then (let’s not pretend that Wiley and Lamacq’s subsequent endorsement of Action Painting!’s Mustard Gas was predicated on much beyond its shared musical DNA with the New Wave of New Wave du jour).
I have never seen track listings published anywhere for 1990s Evening Session shows in the same way as they have been for John Peel, but for those of us who remember the time it’s difficult to overstate how much Goodier loved Falling Down the Stairs by Even As We Speak. Properly went for it. Played on every show for at least a week went for it.
I have no idea whether the band or Sarah Records were enamoured with his suggestion that they should get a bigger label to license the song and score them a major hit, but it came from a well-meaning place; and for someone, anyone, that much to the fore of new music broadcasting at the time to be as kindly disposed to any Sarah output was as noteworthy as it was rare.
The good news for lovers of the Bikini EP is that the Aquavinyle label which released it has resurrected itself after decades of inactivity, and will release the Toulouse concert in its entirety on a white vinyl longplayer entitled Jimmy on the 20th of this month. If the abnormally good sound quality of the EP translates across the entire album, it should be outstanding. No checking online setlist aggregators to see what’s on it, though. That’s cheating.
Mentioned further up the page, Even As We Speak get their first airing since TML came back this week, as a means with which to launch another new semi-regular feature - Goodier Before Wiley and Lamacq, where "before" has a double meaning.
We all have our own favourite presenters of or entry points to particular longstanding programmes, TV or radio; and whether it’s a popular view or not, my favourite era of listening to the Evening Session on Radio 1 was when Mark Goodier was at the helm.
Guileless is not a word often thrown around as a compliment, but I absolutely mean it as one when considering Goodier’s choices for the show between 1990 and 1993. And I do assume they were mainly his, considering he and successors Jo Wiley and Steve Lamacq shared a producer in Jeff Smith (at least initially; Smith would ascend far loftier heights from 1994).
The more cynical cool of the latter duo was simply absent from Goodier’s puppy dog enthusiastic delivery and his record box, and there were things he played that, had Wylie and Lamacq already been installed, I believe would never have got a look in.
Industrial acts such as KMFDM or Skyscraper. The classical music sampling breakbeat dance of Nu-Tek. A genuinely fantastic ragga-tinged skronk from the by then commercially busted flush Adamski. The slow pummelling of Mad Cow Disease. The stop-start hardcore of John & Julie. And, on occasion, acts from a Sarah Records label whose status as pariah among the music inkies and those who wrote for them was virtually irreversible by then (let’s not pretend that Wiley and Lamacq’s subsequent endorsement of Action Painting!’s Mustard Gas was predicated on much beyond its shared musical DNA with the New Wave of New Wave du jour).
I have never seen track listings published anywhere for 1990s Evening Session shows in the same way as they have been for John Peel, but for those of us who remember the time it’s difficult to overstate how much Goodier loved Falling Down the Stairs by Even As We Speak. Properly went for it. Played on every show for at least a week went for it.
I have no idea whether the band or Sarah Records were enamoured with his suggestion that they should get a bigger label to license the song and score them a major hit, but it came from a well-meaning place; and for someone, anyone, that much to the fore of new music broadcasting at the time to be as kindly disposed to any Sarah output was as noteworthy as it was rare.
Hmmm, that's 1,300 words about a label that's apparently over. I can't be doing this right.
Just to finish on Wiley and Lamacq before moving on. You're not going to find (m)any of their most commonly endorsed Britpop era acts on TML, and having already prattled on for so long this week I won't go into the nuts and bolts of why. Suffice it to say that my views on the whole Britpop era align far more with those of the likes of the late Neil Kulkarni (if without the sexually aggressive swearing) than ever they have those two broadcasters, and ever will.
Enough about the recent proliferation of Britpop retrospective radio and stage shows, thirtieth anniversary releases of key albums of the time, etc. has rather driven home the point to me that history is generally written, and indeed sometimes revised, by the victors.
And I do mean revised. Tracks from Elastica's 1995 self-titled debut album, as released on Lamacq's own Deceptive label, still command regular plays on BBC Radio 6 Music out of all proportion relative to its merits. To this pair of ears, current Dry Cleaning tracks such as Cruise Ship Designer get way closer to distilling the abstruse, angular, oddball essence of early Wire than Elastic ever managed.
More pertinent to this week's List selections, I reminded myself that in correctly mourning the passing of Food Records co-founder Andy Ross, Lamacq incorrectly opined on air that it was Ross "who'd discovered Shampoo".
That must have come as news to the Manic Street Preachers, who featured Jacqui Blake and Carrie Askew on the 1992 promo for Little Baby Nothing; or else to Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne, who signed the duo to their boutique label Icerink in 1993 and put out their opening two singles some time before Food came calling. The first of those is included in this week's List.
Do I give him the benefit of the doubt and presume he actually meant "signed" rather than "discovered", to stop me giving myself paroxysms into old age over such matters (see also older chestnuts such as the misappropriation of "indie")?
Much else to enjoy this week, including:
Immaculate New Order-on-a-budget stylings from early Elefant Records heroes Family (I'm pretty sure this is a particular favourite of that Pete Green, but apologies if not, Pete),
My first Armchair Raver selection (T99), by no means the only track you'll be hearing from Olivier Abbeloos in the near future,
J xx
DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
A SESSION OF SORTS: Blueboy
BLUEBOY - Deux (2025)
DEARY - Seabird (2026)
FAMILY - Como Un Aviador (1994)
SLEIGH BELLS - Tell Em (2010)
BEN FOLDS - Bastard (2005)
I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER
T99 - Anasthasia (1991)
GOODIER BEFORE WILEY & LAMACQ
ALT BLK ERA - Run Rabbit (2025)
WILLIAM D DRAKE - Ziegler (2011)
JUANA MOLINA - Un día (2008)
MILES HUNT - Falsified (2007)
COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
LOOP - Black Sun (1988)
A SESSION OF SORTS: Blueboy
BLUEBOY - Marco Polo (1998)
BLUEBOY - Hit (1994)
STUART MOXHAM - Showers (2025)
BELBURY POLY - Copse (2020)
ISN’T THAT…?
IN LOVING MEMORY: Sly Dunbar
INI KAMOZE - World-a-Reggae (1984)
